|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Rabah Arezki; Van Le Dao |
| Abstract: | Can a political rupture permanently alter a society's religious trajectory? We exploit variation in the intensity of French Revolutionary conflict across departments between 1787 and 1793 linking it to Catholic attachment over the following century — including La Croix readership and church attendance in 1940–1950 that is before postwar migration reshuffled France's population. More exposed departments became durably less religious: a one-standard-deviation increase in unrest lowers Catholic newspaper readership by 0.3–0.4 points on a four-point scale. A global panel of revolutions since 1900 corroborates this: violent revolutions predict secularization, not a backlash-driven religious revival. |
| Keywords: | revolution, religiosity, secularization, persistence, French Revolution, political economy of religion |
| JEL: | N33 N43 Z12 D74 P00 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12967 |
| By: | Kárníková, Lydie |
| Abstract: | The naming of public spaces is a popular tool that ruling regimes have used since the second half of the 19th century to imprint their values on the public sphere and to express symbolic power. However, due to frequent changes in the political and social context, urban naming systems also change frequently. The most recent significant intervention in Central and Eastern Europe was the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s. Among the main features of the wave of post-socialist renaming were a widespread “cleansing of sins”—that is, the restoration of original names to places that had been renamed during the communist dictatorship—as well as numerous disputes and dilemmas regarding which names to remove and what to replace them with. Naming policy stems from a broader political and historical context, but ultimately it is always the result of negotiations within specific local conditions. This paper examines changes in city names—known as urbanonymy—through the lens of critical toponymy, which links cultural and political geography with history, memory studies, or anthropology. It presents the main trends in the transformation of urbanonymy in the period following the collapse of the socialist bloc and, based on selected works, offers insight into specific situations involving the renaming of public spaces, with a particular focus on Czech and Slovak cities. At the same time, it highlights a renewed wave of interest in lingering socialist toponyms and their repoliticization in the context of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine after 2014. |
| Date: | 2026–09–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:brj6e_v1 |
| By: | Federico, Giovanni; Tena Junguito, Antonio |
| Abstract: | Humans have been migrating since the out-of-Africa dispersal, roughly 300, 000 years ago, but the nineteenth century marked a major leap forward. For the first time in history, millions of people voluntarily migrated over long distances, from Europe to the Americas and Oceania, and from India and China to Southeast Asia. Yet we still know too little about these flows. The recent literature has made great progress in analyzing migrants' motivations and the microeconomic impact of their arrival, but the conventional wisdom still relies on the data compiled by Ferenczi and Willcox (1929) on gross migrations in the Atlantic economy. In this paper, we reconstruct new worldwide series for total (gross) and net migration, including inter-Asian and, partially, inter-European flows from 1800 to 1938. We estimate that more than 150 million people, about 10% of the world population, migrated, but half of them returned home. They accounted for between a sixth and a tenth of the workforce in the Americas and from a fifth to three-quarters in Australia and New Zealand. We also estimate the long-run effect of migrations on the distribution of the world population. |
| Keywords: | International migration; Global migration; Historical demography; Return migration; Labor mobility; Population dynamics; Economic history |
| JEL: | J61 N30 J11 F22 |
| Date: | 2026–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:50842 |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | Students of ancient societies critical of New Institutional Economics (NIE) seem ineAective or intimidated in expressing a full alternative to its current hegemony. Yet a conceptual ghost continues to haunt many works in this field: that of economic surplus. The notion of social surplus is indeed distinctive of the classical economists’ approach, continued by Marx, and more recently revived by Piero SraAa and Pierangelo Garegnani, after having been ‘submerged and forgotten’ by the Marginalist revolution of the late Ninetieth century. This paper builds upon the familiarity that students of precapitalist societies have with the concept of surplus to delineate a robust economic alternative to NIE. After a brief presentation of the surplus approach, the paper examines some motives of unsatisfaction with NIE and with some more recent mainstream studies of the onset of inequality we label ‘marginalist materialism’. The criticism Karl Polanyi has moved to the surplus approach is then constructively reconsidered. The paper underlines the bidirectionality of the interest in communication between economic history studies and surplus theory. |
| Keywords: | Surplus Approach, Marginalism, New Institutional Economics, Samuel Bowles, Sraffa, Marginism Jel Classification: A12, B51, B52, N01, Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:946 |
| By: | Katherine Eriksson; Peter Zhixian Lin; Gregory Niemesh |
| Abstract: | In the late nineteenth century, Americans feared that crowded immigrant neighborhoods were spreading disease through industrial cities. We study this claim using newly constructed town-level panel data from Massachusetts, 1860 to 1915, a setting uniquely suited to this exercise because its early vital registration system allows consistent measurement of mortality before national registration became widespread. Using a shift-share instrumental variable strategy based on historical settlement patterns, we estimate the effect of local exposure to immigration on mortality. The relevant question is not whether immigrant families themselves experienced higher mortality, but whether immigration altered the local disease environment more broadly. We find that increases in the foreign-born share significantly raised infant and child mortality, with the infant effect falling disproportionately on the post-neonatal period. Mechanical changes in the composition of births by parent nativity account for only a portion of the estimated effect, implying that the results are not driven primarily by higher mortality among immigrant births. Instead, the evidence is consistent with increased exposure to immigrants, communicable disease, and spillovers to children of native-born parents. These findings highlight immigration as one factor shaping the mortality transition in crowded high-mortality environments. |
| JEL: | I10 J13 N31 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35743 |
| By: | Motonori Ishii (Graduate School of Economics, Waseda University) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to reconsider F. A. Hayek's liberalism not primarily as a form of neoliberalism, but as an attempt to revive classical liberalism. Recent advances in neoliberalism studies have increasingly clarified Hayek's role within the personal and institutional networks of neoliberalism, as well as the affinities between Hayek and neoliberalism in their affirmation of a positive role for the state in maintaining a competitive order and their criticism of classical liberalism understood as laissez-faire. At the same time, however, Hayek proposed naming the Mont Pèlerin Society after Lord Acton or Alexis de Tocqueville, both of whom he regarded as leading representatives of the classical liberal tradition. Moreover, during the very period in which the Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the Mont Pèlerin Society marked the emergence and consolidation of neoliberalism, Hayek was actively engaged in rereading and reinterpreting classical liberalism. This suggests that the central aim of Hayek's project for the revival of liberalism should be understood not as the reconstruction of classical liberalism, but as its recovery and restatement under modern conditions. This paper develops this argument from three perspectives: Hayek's sustained interest in the history of British thought since the 1920s; the fact that, while sharing with neoliberals a concern with the competitive order and the positive role of the state, he traced the intellectual foundations of these ideas back to classical liberal thinkers; and his strategic use of Whig historiography as part of a broader intellectual project aimed at reviving liberalism. |
| Keywords: | Hayek, neoliberalism, classical liberalism, Whig historiography, Old Whig, intellectual history |
| JEL: | B25 B31 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wap:wpaper:2613 |
| By: | Jaadla, Hannaliis; Davenport, Romola |
| Abstract: | Using high-frequency historical data on mortality (weekly) and temperature (daily), we examine the puzzle of the late decline of infant diarrhoeal mortality in British and Irish cities. While mortality from other faecal–oral diseases began falling before the 1880s alongside investments in urban water supply and waste disposal, large summer epidemics of infant diarrhoea persisted until the 1910s. We analyse a large panel of towns spanning the period 1893–1930 to characterise the temperature-infant mortality nexus and to identify turning points in this relationship. Two-way fixed effects models reveal the roles of flush toilet provision, reductions in fly populations, and infant feeding practices in the decline of infant diarrhoeal mortality. Our findings indicate that preventing lethal summer epidemics among young children required coordinated improvements in both domestic and environmental hygiene. We suggest that these findings provide historical support for contemporary calls for ‘transformative WaSH’ programmes. |
| Date: | 2026–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:zb6dn_v1 |
| By: | Matus-Lopez, Mauricio; Pedraza, Camilo Cid |
| Abstract: | The objective of this article is to present the results of reconstructing the historical series of health expenditure in Chile from the creation of the segmented model in 1981 to 2024, and to briefly analyze its evolution in historical context. To this end, data were collected and digitized from primary sources: the Statistical Bulletins and Public Accounts of FONASA (1989–2016; 2020–2024), the Statistical Series of the Isapre System (SUPER, 1990–2024), and the Public Finance Statistics of DIPRES (2004–2025). The results show accelerated growth in private spending until the 1990s, followed by a sustained increase in public health expenditure associated with higher fiscal contributions and mandatory contributions. However, the long-term analysis reveals periods of slowdown in public spending coinciding with the expansion of private infrastructure, revealing the persistence of a segmented and unequal financing system. The trajectory of Chilean health expenditure shows significant variation in proportions and pace, conditioned by political and economic contexts. Alongside this analysis, we make the complete series used available to researchers in open access. |
| Date: | 2026–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:prhkv_v1 |
| By: | Simon Oluoch Ochieng (Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines Ba a as a Czechoslovak multinational corporation during the Great Depression. It asks how a large export-oriented firm used foreign subsidiaries, related-party prices, foreign-exchange arrangements, tax accounting, and domestic employment to manage the crisis between 1929 and 1934. The paper draws on archival material from the Ba a I/9–Daòové oddìlení collection, including Ministry of Finance, tax-audit, foreign-exchange, wage, retail-tax, manager-remuneration, and whistleblower files. The evidence indicates that Ba a´s multinational structure served as a system for allocating prices, profits, currency, losses, receivables, and personnel across borders. State experts described foreign-company accounts as an accounting bridge between Zlín and foreign markets and reconstructed large alleged undeclared foreign-trade profits. The Czechoslovak state responded through audits, export-price reconstructions, questions about accounting categories, foreign-currency investigations, requests for foreign-account statements, and settlement negotiations. Ba a also maintained a substantial domestic employment, retail, and tax footprint, which helped the firm defend contested international practices as beneficial to the national economy. This paper contributes to economic history by showing how a Central European multinational used cross-border organization under Depression conditions and how the state tried to make that organization visible, taxable, and controllable. |
| Keywords: | Ba a; Czechoslovakia; Great Depression; multinational enterprise; transfer pricing; foreign exchange; tax avoidance; economic history |
| JEL: | F23 N14 N44 N84 H25 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2026_29 |
| By: | Ichimura, Hidehiko (University of Arizona, Department of Economics); Sawada, Yasuyuki (University of Tokyo, Faculty of Economics); Takayasu, Yutaro (Hitotsubashi University, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study); Tanaka, Mari (University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | When societies transition from hereditary to meritocratic systems, to what extent does educational expansion broaden access to elite positions and change inherited patterns of occupational sorting? We study Japan after the Meiji Restoration, which abolished samurai hereditary privileges in public-sector positions and modernized education. Exploiting cohort-specific discontinuities in access to secondary schooling created by the expansion of public secondary schools, we find that greater access increased elite attainment among both samurai and commoner families, but most additional elites entered sectors historically associated with their family background. Many had non-elite fathers, indicating greater upward intergenerational mobility into elite status. |
| Keywords: | social mobility, intergenerational mobility, secondary education, social transition, history |
| JEL: | J62 I24 I26 N35 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18924 |
| By: | Jonas M. Geweke (University of Zurich); Niccolò G. Armandola (University of Zurich); Paul Goetz (University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | A lack of research on preindustrial wealth mobility has hindered our understanding of the extent and mechanisms through which preindustrial wealth was transmitted across generations. This paper studies homeownership and housing wealth mobility in the city-state of Basel (1500–1800). Using a database of over 40, 000 father–son pairs, we apply linear probability and rank-rank regression models to find homeownership and housing wealth persistence across six generations. We identify three transmission mechanisms: direct inheritance, assortative mating, and political officeholding. Finally, we observe higher mobility rates in the sixteenth century compared to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. |
| Keywords: | mobility, inequality, wealth, preindustrial Switzerland |
| JEL: | N33 J62 D31 R31 N93 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0312 |
| By: | Pawel Janas |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the transformation of American life insurance, the largest contractual savings institution in the United States before Social Security. As the market for insurance became national, did control over the savings it collected disperse with it? Using a newly digitized annual firm-by-state panel of premiums and losses covering nearly every U.S. life insurer from 1888 to 1940, I distinguish the geography of collection from the geography of control: where premiums were paid, and where the firms receiving them were domiciled. The industry was remade over these six decades. Real premium income rose more than twentyfold, the number of active insurers grew sixfold, incorporation shifted decisively from the Northeast toward the Midwest and South, and within-state concentration fell by nearly half. Control was rearranged, not dispersed. Chartering domestic insurers raised local retention almost entirely at the extensive margin. Across regions, this closed a large gap, as the Northeast retained nearly eleven times as much of its premium as the South in the 1890s and only twice as much by the 1930s, with nine-tenths of the convergence coming from Southern states acquiring domestic sectors where they had none. The national total held: firms domiciled where premium was raised collected just under a quarter of it in the 1890s and just over a fifth in the 1930s, even as household participation converged steadily across states. Legal permission to operate nationally sufficed to integrate the market in which insurance was sold, but not to disperse control over the investable cash it collected. |
| JEL: | G22 G52 N21 N22 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35771 |
| By: | Michael D. Bordo; Carolyn Wilkins |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the history of private money to assess the conditions under which stablecoins could function safely at scale and what their growth may imply for U.S. monetary power. Historical systems of private money in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland show that par circulation depended on institutional arrangements rather than payment technology. Drawing on the monetary history of private money, convertibility, and international currencies, the paper identifies five foundations for scalable private money: credible convertibility, high-quality and transparent backing, a uniform regulatory perimeter, par clearing infrastructure, and credible crisis management and loss allocation. Stablecoins may improve settlement speed, programmability, and cross-border access, but they do not remove these requirements. Applying this framework to contemporary stablecoins and the GENIUS Act, the paper finds that the Act addresses several of these foundations more fully than others, with crisis management and cross-border coordination less fully developed. Dollar stablecoins could extend the reach of dollar settlement, but historical experience reviewed here suggests that whether this strengthens the dollar system depends both on the institutional framework supporting stablecoins and on the deeper foundations of U.S. monetary dominance: confidence in U.S. institutions, fiscal capacity, monetary credibility, and the rule of law. |
| JEL: | E42 E44 G15 N20 N40 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35768 |
| By: | Chiu, Ethan |
| Abstract: | Industrial development depends on institutions that organise technological learning and govern production. In Cold War Taiwan, these institutions also shaped who could challenge industrial harm. Drawing on field research, interviews, legal records, and institutional histories, this article argues that Taiwan’s developmental capacity was selective. A paired history of RCA Taiwan and the separate RCA-ITRI technology transfer project shows how investment promotion and labour governance privileged officially selected industrial objectives over workers’ independent authority. Public sponsorship equipped semiconductor learning with personnel, facilities, and foreign knowledge. Labour administration, managed representation, and corporate control of hazard information restricted workers’ demands for protection. Pay, housing, and production routines made exposure difficult to avoid, while repeated inspections failed to secure compliance. Missing records, withheld information, and corporate restructuring then obstructed compensation claims. Workers and their supporters challenged these barriers by assembling legal, scientific, and archival resources. Their struggle places labour protection within the history of developmental capacity, alongside the acquisition of technology. |
| Date: | 2026–09–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:3md5a_v1 |
| By: | Leander Heldring (Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management and NBER); Davis Kedrosky (Northwestern University, Economics); James A. Robinson (The University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, Department of Political Science and NBER); Matthias Weigand (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | Many states exhibit high degrees of capacity without the fiscal resources necessary to fund a modern bureaucracy. We argue that they achieve this by exploiting features of the social structure of the societies they govern to motivate individuals to engage in bureaucratic and governance tasks without pay. We develop and illustrate the concept of the “Embedded State†using a unique survey of British urban government from 1835. Since British local authorities had few resources, only two-thirds of positions were paid. We first show that unpaid positions were significantly more productive than paid ones. We then show that unpaid positions conveyed prestige and were ‘stepping stone’ positions, provided different on-the-job incentives, and were taken up by the socio-economic elite. We also show that the successful Embedded State featured patronage and corruption and could not fully motivate unpaid bureaucrats to implement onerous tasks. |
| JEL: | D73 H11 H41 H50 N13 N43 N44 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2026-60 |
| By: | Matthew Curtis; Paula Eugenia Gobbi; Marc Goñi; Joanne Haddad |
| Abstract: | Centuries before the demographic transition, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) lim-ited fertility in Western Europe through high celibacy, late marriage, and nuclear households.Whether the EMP reflected female empowerment or instead financial hardship remains de-bated. This paper shows that local inheritance institutions determined where economicopportunity strengthened the EMP and where the EMP reflected poverty. We construct anew atlas of 2, 486 rural and urban inheritance customs in France and Belgium and combineit with genealogical data on 75, 000 women born between 1500 and 1750. We show that theEMP manifested alongside earning opportunities where inheritance included women andyounger siblings, but that the EMP reflected economic distress where inheritance was ine-galitarian; that effects differed between urban and rural areas; and that they persisted overcenturies. We develop and estimate a structural model in which inheritance rules affectmarriage decisions through female empowerment and financial constraints. The estimatesimply that roughly 65 percent of celibacy reflected choice rather than constraint, suggestingthat the EMP was heterogeneous but primarily a positive force for female empowerment. |
| Keywords: | European Marriage Pattern; Celibacy; Customs; Inheritance |
| JEL: | D10 J10 K11 N33 O10 |
| Date: | 2026–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/413756 |
| By: | Nils Herger (Study Center Gerzensee) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the remarkably early development of Switzerland's cotton-spinning industry. The corresponding history differs in crucial ways from the British case by occurring in a landlocked country without colonies or domestic coalfields. Nevertheless, Switzerland's pioneering cotton-spinning mills were highly profitable. Extra transportation costs from importing raw cotton could be offset by hiring textile workers from a preindustrial cottage industry at relatively low wages. The coal handicap could be overcome by exploiting water power from Alpine rivers. As a result, the cotton-spinning industry spread along these rivers rather than being concentrated in large cities. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:szg:worpap:2604 |
| By: | Stratton, Ry |
| Abstract: | This comment examines the constitutional future of state Blaine-style Amendments following the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson v. Makin. While recent Free Exercise Clause decisions have largely invalidated state provisions that deny public benefits to institutions based on their religious status, the comment argues that a distinct category of amendment remains constitutionally viable: provisions that prohibit public funding of all private schools, regardless of religious affiliation. Through a historical and doctrinal analysis of Blaine-style Amendments, the development of the Supreme Court’s “play in the joints” jurisprudence, and the Court’s decisions in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Carson, the author contends that modern Free Exercise doctrine permits states to decline funding private education altogether, provided they do not discriminate on the basis of religion. The comment focuses on Michigan’s constitutional amendment, which bars public aid to all private elementary and secondary schools rather than targeting religious institutions specifically. Comparing Michigan’s approach with similar provisions in Alaska and Massachusetts, the author argues that Michigan’s amendment best withstands contemporary constitutional scrutiny because it rests on a public-private distinction rather than a sectarian-nonsectarian distinction. The comment further maintains that Michigan’s amendment survives claims of unconstitutional religious animus because it was adopted and later reaffirmed long after the anti-Catholic sentiment associated with the original federal Blaine Amendment. The author concludes that Michigan’s model provides a constitutional blueprint for states seeking to limit public funding of religious education while remaining consistent with modern Free Exercise jurisprudence and maintaining a strong separation between church and state. [This abstract was written by Microsoft Copilot, a generative artificial intelligence.] |
| Date: | 2026–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:lawarc:wpf4c_v1 |
| By: | Docquier, Frédéric (LISER); Dominici, Alice (IMT Lucca); Fernández, Martín (LISER); Mariani, Fabio (Université catholique de Louvain) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a historical quasi-natural experiment to provide causal evidence on how networks and diversity affect migrants' economic outcomes in a rural setting. Between 1932 and 1941, Italy's Fascist government relocated about 4, 000 families to the Pontine Marshes, a formerly malarial, sparsely inhabited area undergoing massive reclamation. Settlers from different provinces were quasi-randomly assigned to plots, providing plausibly exogenous variation in neighborhood composition. Using data on the universe of settlers, we find that larger common-origin networks significantly increase the likelihood of long-term settlement and land purchase. Greater neighborhood diversity worsens economic performance on average, largely by reducing network externalities, but benefits settlers who lack common-origin ties. Network effects operate, at least partly, through higher productivity, with no evidence of knowledge transmission. Instead, our results point to cooperation and mutual support as the main channel. Effects are concentrated among families under the greatest strain and those from origins historically more reliant on bonding social capital. Network effects are also stronger when neighbors arrive at the same time and live nearby. |
| Keywords: | migration, networks, diversity, productivity, agriculture |
| JEL: | D85 J24 J61 N54 O13 O15 O40 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18931 |
| By: | Akren, Mehmet B.; Ertan, Arhan S.; Putterman, Louis G. |
| Abstract: | The regional distribution of world population underwent profound changes during the age of exploration and colonization, in which a handful of European powers colonized the better part of the remaining continents. One consequence is that many countries in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, after sharp contractions of indigenous populations following exposure to Old World diseases, today have populations in which European or African descendants form majorities and speak predominantly European languages. Migration and in some cases colonization also altered population compositions in countries including South Africa, Cape Verde, Fiji and Singapore. And descendants of 'emigr'es came to outnumber those of "stayers" even for non-colonizing countries, including, e.g., Ireland and Lebanon. We identify major determinants of who settled where, during this era of colonialism and migration, demonstrating that both "natural" factors like availability and fertility of agricultural land and climate and disease prevalence, on the one hand, and power inequalities and cultural variables, on the other, explain the broad patterns of migration. |
| Abstract: | Die regionale Verteilung der Weltbevölkerung erfuhr im Zeitalter der Entdeckungen und der Kolonialisierung tiefgreifende Veränderungen, in dem eine Handvoll europäischer Mächte den größten Teil der übrigen Kontinente kolonisierten. Eine Folge davon ist, dass in vielen Ländern Amerikas, Australiens und Neuseelands - nach einem drastischen Rückgang der indigenen Bevölkerung infolge der Ansteckung mit Krankheiten aus der Alten Welt - heute die Nachfahren europäischer oder afrikanischer Einwanderer die Mehrheit bilden und überwiegend europäische Sprachen sprechen. Migration und in einigen Fällen auch Kolonisierung veränderten zudem die Bevölkerungszusammensetzung in Ländern wie Südafrika, Kap Verde, Fidschi und Singapur. Und selbst in Ländern, die keine Kolonialmächte waren - darunter beispielsweise Irland und der Libanon -, überstieg die Zahl der Nachkommen von Auswanderern schließlich die der "Daheimgebliebenen". Wir identifizieren die wichtigsten Determinanten dafür, wer sich in dieser Ära des Kolonialismus und der Migration wo niedergelassen hat, und zeigen, dass sowohl "natürliche" Faktoren wie die Verfügbarkeit und Fruchtbarkeit von Ackerland sowie das Klima und die Krankheitsprävalenz einerseits als auch Machtungleichheiten und kulturelle Variablen andererseits die allgemeinen Migrationsmuster erklären. |
| Keywords: | International Migration, Columbian Exchange, Historical Demography, Power Asymmetries, Colonialism, Disease, Land Endowments |
| JEL: | F22 N30 N50 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:343572 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (University of Pennsylvania, NBER, and CEPR); Patrick Norrick (Northwestern University) |
| Abstract: | As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth. |
| Keywords: | fertility decline; demographic transition; population aging; economic growth;labor force; population projections |
| JEL: | J11 J13 O40 E24 O11 |
| Date: | 2026–10–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-016 |
| By: | Noame Khaldi |
| Abstract: | Ce travail montre que le centre financier luxembourgeois ne résulte pas uniquement de l’essor soudain des euromarchés mais d’une superposition d’ajustements institutionnels amorcée dès les années 1920. Mobilisant l’institutionnalisme historique (Streeck and Thelen, 2005; Thelen, 2009) et des archives administratives et parlementaires inédites (Conseil d’État, Chambre des Députés, fonds CCB des Archives nationales du Luxembourg), il identifie un processus de sédimentation législative qui compose l’infrastructure financière offshore. Une nuance fondamentale traverse l’analyse : le Luxembourg connaît non un régime d’accumulation unique mais deux régimes successifs (industrielsidérurgique jusqu’aux années 1970, puis financiarisé) articulés par conversion plutôt que par rupture autour de la crise sidérurgique de 1974-1981. Le travail propose en conclusion un idéal-type wébérien caractérisant le régime financiarisé luxembourgeois post-1974 par quatre propriétés conjointes. |
| Keywords: | Luxembourg, centres financiers, financiarisation, dépendance au sentier, changement institutionnel |
| JEL: | H26 F38 G28 N24 N44 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-32 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (University of Pennsylvania, NBER, and CEPR); Carlos Sanz (Banco de Espana and CEMFI) |
| Abstract: | How socially distinct are competing political parties’ candidate pools? Since names encode cultural milieu, lineage, linguistic origin, and ancestry that standard socioeconomic variables miss, we measure social sorting across parties with names, predicting affiliation out of sample within municipality-years. Across more than 2.5 million local-election candidates, names pick the right-wing candidate in a random within-municipality pair 55.8% of the time in Spain and 56.5% in France. Given names alone do most of the work: around 55.0%. Under a stylized model of intergenerational transmission of political orientation, this translates to an implied gap of about 25 p.p. in parental naming propensities. The signal is stable in Spain but doubles in France by 2026. Within ideological families, names separate parties as sharply as across the right–left divide, even more so in France. The Spanish cleavage is linguistic and growing. The French one runs through names of immigrant origin and is strongest in large cities. |
| Keywords: | Names; Political selection; Social sorting; Political cleavages; Party candidates;Machine learning prediction |
| JEL: | D72 J15 Z13 C53 |
| Date: | 2026–09–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-017 |
| By: | Aldous, Michael; Fliers, Philip T.; Turner, John D. |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a new explanation for the time variation in the extent to which CEOs matter for firm performance: the professionalization of the role. We explore whether increased access to specialized knowledge and greater codification of executive responsibilities rendered CEOs increasingly consequential for firm outcomes over time. Using a history-to-theory framework, we theorize how individual CEO characteristics account for temporal variation in the CEO effect in the United Kingdom. Then, using a hand-collected dataset of the largest 100 UK companies between 1900 and 2009, we find that the CEO effect in the UK varies between 6 and 17 percent and that professionalization accounts for an increasing share of relative explanatory power of the CEO effect over time. |
| Keywords: | CEO effect, Professionalization, Upper Echelons Theory, Managerial Discretion, History to Theory |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qmsrps:202608 |
| By: | Congregado, Emilio; Esteve, Vicente; Prats, María A.; Rubino, Nicola |
| Abstract: | This paper tests the Tax-Smoothing Hypothesis (TSH) in Spain over a 174-year horizon (1850-2024). Using Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and a bivariate VAR framework, we examine the intertemporal relationship between public revenues and expenditures while accounting for structural instability. The results confirm a long-run cointegrating relationship, but with a tax-tilting parameter consistently between 0.85 and 0.91. This deviation reveals a structural “deficit bias”, where Spanish authorities have systematically postponed tax burdens through debt issuance. Multi-structural break analysis demonstrates that the TSH only becomes a robust framework following the institutional modernization of the mid- 20th century; earlier periods, marked by fiscal archaism and borrowing constraints, fail to conform to the model’s normative predictions. Furthermore, the VAR model confirms that while the budget balance responds rationally to expenditure shocks, its magnitude is heavily influenced by institutional shifts. We conclude that this persistent deficit bias is an embedded feature of the Spanish fiscal state, posing significant challenges for long-term sustainability within the Eurozone’s restrictive fiscal framework. |
| Keywords: | España;gestión de la deuda pública;optimal taxation;public debt management;sesgo impositivo (Tax-tilting);Spain;suavizamiento fiscal (Tax-smoothing);Tax-smoothing;Tax-tilting;tributación óptima |
| JEL: | F3 G3 J1 |
| Date: | 2026–08–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140957 |
| By: | Maksym Nechepurenko |
| Abstract: | Public evidence can become sufficient to settle a prediction-market contract before the venue records its first determination, but the relevant boundary depends on the applicable rule version, exact release object, source hierarchy, correction history, and unfinished contract conditions. This paper defines two Kalshi clocks: first decidability, the earliest contemporaneous singleton in the rule-evidence mapping, and stable decidability, the retrospective earliest time after which the same singleton remains unchanged through finalization. A completed retrospective identification test establishes a narrow feasibility result. In a frozen blind pilot, all 25 identities and blinding checks passed and current rule text was recovered for all 25; no exact or bounded historical rule version and no exact or bounded official source-release object was recovered. The full historical recovery covered 152, 694 ordinary tickers, 11, 530 exact event identities, and 6, 540 read-only official requests, with zero historically eligible events and zero historically eligible tickers. This is an observability result, not a claim that no market was decidable or that public evidence never existed. A completed prospective infrastructure shakedown established observation capability for three source programmes across 25 markets, with integrity revalidation of 781, 266 lifecycle frames, 22 closed lower-bounded reconnect receipts, no unresolved reconnect gap, no due-but-missed official release, and an inactive price layer. Production evidence enrollment is active. The prospective sample is constructed only at enrollment close from prospectively frozen identities and pre-outcome fields; its frozen target size is selected mechanically under the registered full, reduced, exploratory, or no-go support disposition. No contractual-decidability clock, human-adjudication, price, or cross-venue result is reported here. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.16642 |
| By: | Pawel Janas |
| Abstract: | Large financial intermediaries are more stable than small ones, and the largest are also the most geographically diversified. Whether that breadth is a source of stability or a byproduct of scale is difficult to establish, since intermediaries diversify by growing large. I examine how the diversified intermediary is assembled, using a newly digitized firm-by-state panel of the near-universe of U.S. life insurers from 1888 to 1940, the largest nonbank institutional investors of the period. Over these decades, the number of insurers per state more than quadrupled and within-state concentration declined by half, yet a small number of geographically extensive insurers retained a stable share of national premiums. I decompose firm-level outcomes into the insurer’s underwriting level and the composition of its book. Insurers entered new states before attaining scale, each entry constituting a small and favorably selected position with the convex payoff of a real option. The most successful decile of entries generated half of a cohort’s premium. Expansion was costly on two margins: a broad insurer earned less per dollar of coverage and paid 15.1 percent more in claims than an equally large insurer writing in the same state and year. The pricing cost is attributable to the composition of a broad insurer’s book, the claims cost to the insurer itself. A comparison across firms understates the claims cost, since the markets a broad insurer adds exhibit favorable claims experience of their own. Stability, by contrast, is attributable to scale, since breadth’s advantages in volatility and survival vanish conditional on size. Risk pooling was bounded: approximately nine tenths of an insurer’s loss-ratio variance was common to its markets. Diversification was the product of costly expansion, and the stability attributed to it is the scale that expansion produced. |
| JEL: | G22 G23 N21 N22 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35769 |
| By: | Randall Akee; Emilia Simeonova |
| Abstract: | There is substantial heterogeneity in economic, educational, and health outcomes among American Indians, shaped by factors such as geographic location (urban vs. rural), resource endowments, and historical experiences with federal policies. Nonetheless, there is clear evidence that historical policies, including forced relocation, boarding schools, and assimilation efforts, have had long-lasting negative effects on human capital development and intergenerational mobility in these populations. Recent decades have seen improvements in some areas, particularly where tribes have exercised greater self-governance and implemented innovative economic development strategies. This paper emphasizes that a “one-size-fits-all” approach is inadequate for analyzing the sources and potential remediation of disparities across various outcomes between Native populations and descendants of later arrivals. A unique challenge is that the measurement and analysis of American Indian outcomes are complicated by issues of racial and tribal identification, data limitations, and changing definitions. These challenges can obscure true trends and make it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of policies or programs, underscoring the need for more precise and disaggregated data. This essay comments on the need for caution and clarity in the use and analysis of data for this population in both historical and contemporary settings. |
| JEL: | J0 N3 O10 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35730 |
| By: | Samson Gebrerufael (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Renee van Eyden (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically evaluates the technological learning trajectory models of Porcile et al. (2023) across African countries categorized into three institutional regimes: developmental (Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda), conflicting claims (Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Tunisia), and neoliberal (Seychelles, South Africa). Using panel ARDL modeling, the study investigates the impact of real effective exchange rate (REER) depreciation on technological learning-by-doing, proxied by the growth rate of export income elasticity (GIEX). The results show no significant learning effects in the developmental regime due to immediate equilibrium adjustment and insignificant coefficients of REER depreciation. The conflicting claims regime demonstrates the same results, driven by low-complexity export baskets. Conversely, the neoliberal regime achieves a relatively persistent short-lived technological learning. However, its long-run REER growth coefficient is negative, confirming that over-reliance on price competitiveness retards long-run growth per Thirlwall's law. Ultimately, state failure hinders heavy intervention regimes in Africa, whereas moving toward the neoliberal framework yields better short-run learning outcomes. |
| Keywords: | technological learning-by-doing, REER depreciation, income elasticity of exports, developmental regimes, state failure |
| JEL: | F13 F41 F14 O47 O11 O33 O30 O43 P48 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202625 |
| By: | Viren de Jeu (The University of Chicago Center for the Economics of Human Development) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how ECW pay, benefits, child-to-worker ratios, and education requirements in the U.S. compare to those in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Canada. It also tracks these measures over time in the U.S., beginning in 1934, when the federal government funded an emergency nursery school system to combat the great depression. Median salary data for ECWs and comparable occupations were collected and annualized using national workweek standards, equated to U.S. dollars using PPP conversion factors, and adjusted to 2025 figures using the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI). In the U.S., Early Childhood Worker purchasing power varied over time, peaking in 1977. Although ECW pay in the U.S. has increased over the past 30 years, early childhood workers in the U.S. still experience the lowest absolute and relative pay among all nations studied. Moreover, in the U.S., childcare workers require the lowest level of education and face the highest child-to-worker ratios. |
| Keywords: | compensation, early childhood, worker qualifications |
| JEL: | J30 I00 N30 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2026-013 |
| By: | Nandagiri, Rishita; Senderowicz, Leigh; Sigle-Rushton, Wendy |
| Abstract: | This special issue focuses on reproductive justice (RJ) as a framework for feminist research and activism. The introduction provides an overview of when and why the RJ framework was developed, outlines the ways it challenged and extended the way reproductive rights were understood and approached by feminist scholars and activists, and articulaties its productive potential. RJ’s relevance for identifying and responding to the breadth of rights violations taking place across the globe today can only be grasped with a firm understanding of its scope and foundational concepts, such as intersectionality. Its expanded scope, conceptual complexity, and epistemological orientation make RJ incompatible with the neoclassical rational-choice paradigm, but points of resonance with other frameworks provide possibilities for its integration and contribution both to knowledge and to the development of a feminist methodology in economics. The contributions to this special issue represent some of the first efforts to take forward this important project. |
| Keywords: | reproductive justice;intersectionality;feminist methodology;feminist economics;public policy;Reproductive justice |
| JEL: | I30 B54 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–03–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:127175 |
| By: | Jonathan Beynon (Center for Global Development); Edward Wickstead (Center for Global Development); Tom Veale (Center for Global Development) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to inform discussions on historical responsibility for climate change by presenting a comparative analysis of historical emissions from numerous datasets, using different measures of emissions, different classifications of developed and developing countries, and covering different time periods. We find that while the various datasets give significantly different estimates of total emissions, they are reasonably consistent in their estimates of developed country shares; that developed countries using the UNFCCC’s Annex I classification are responsible for about half of all GHG emissions since 1850, and less than 40 percent if limited to the 23 Annex II countries with a formal obligation to provide climate finance. These shares are lower if we consider contributions to global warming rather than GHG emissions, much lower if we only consider emissions since 1990, but higher if we restrict analysis to just CO2. We also find that taking account of colonial or consumption emissions makes relatively little difference to our results, and that developed country shares of cumulative per capita emissions (not that we think this is an appropriate measure) are even lower than for cumulative emissions. |
| Date: | 2026–09–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:755 |
| By: | C. Kirabo Jackson |
| Abstract: | A large literature posits a central role for human capital in determining macroeconomic output, while another documents substantial private returns to educational investment. However, whether private gains translate into aggregate gains remains uncertain, as signaling, displacement, or general-equilibrium adjustment may drive a wedge between private and aggregate returns. This paper bridges these literatures with causal evidence that state-level school finance reforms (SFRs) increase macroeconomic output. First, I combine design-based micro estimates of SFR effects on private earnings with a cohort replacement framework to simulate state-level earnings per worker. The simulation predicts little change for 10 to 15 years, then gradual gains as treated cohorts enter the labor force, reaching 7.8 percent after 60 years. Next, I test this prediction using the staggered implementation of SFRs across U.S. states. In an event-study framework, state-level earnings per worker track the predicted path, remaining flat through about 15 years before rising roughly 4.7 percent above counterfactual levels after 30 years — consistent with private earnings gains aggregating to the broader economy. Finally, I show that these effects extend to broader economic output, with GDP per capita declining modestly initially before rising to more than 5 percent above its counterfactual path after 30 years. |
| JEL: | E24 H52 I22 I26 J24 O47 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35755 |
| By: | Jacob Moscona |
| Abstract: | How do patent rights affect innovation and downstream production? Patent protection was introduced for plant biotechnology in the United States in 1985, and it affected crops differentially depending on their reproductive structures. Exploiting this unique feature of plant flower structure and a new dataset of crop-specific technology development, I find that the introduction of patent rights increased the development of novel plant varieties. Technology development was driven by a rapid increase in private sector research investment, was accompanied by positive spillover effects on innovation in certain non-biological agricultural technologies, and led to an increase in crop yields. Patent rights, however, may come with potentially significant costs to the consumers of technology and distortions to downstream production. Nevertheless, despite higher spending on seeds, US counties that were more exposed to the change in patent law because of their crop composition experienced an increase in agricultural land values and profits. Taken together, the results suggest that the prospect of patent protection spurred innovation and increased downstream productivity and profits. |
| JEL: | O3 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35735 |
| By: | Braun, Benjamin; Baccaro, Lucio; Cova, Joshua |
| Abstract: | Current account imbalances, which have surged again in recent years, are key drivers of global economic instability and conflict. Political economy explanations tend to focus on wage restraint and currency undervaluation. However, in a world of unrestricted cross-border capital mobility, the binding constraint for sustaining imbalances over time is financial flows. To address this gap, we develop a theoretical framework linking current account imbalances, growth models, and domestic financialization. We hypothesize that deep and liquid financial markets enable the reproduction of consumption-led growth by relaxing the current account constraint, while financial underdevelopment favors export-led growth by incentivizing capital exports. We test our theoretical propositions with a series of error correction models and an event history analysis, based on panel data on 55 countries over the period 1970-2022. We find broad support for the theoretical expectations but a dissimilarity in the relationship between growth models and financialization: While financial development is crucial for the long-term maintenance of consumption-led growth in advanced economies especially, results are inconclusive regarding the role of financial underdevelopment as a facilitating factor for export-led growth. |
| Date: | 2026–09–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:q7p2e_v1 |